


i never knew daylight could be so violent

by elsaclack



Series: you can't choose what stays and what fades away [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, but there is some, but there's definite gore, end of the world angst, listen it's not up to the walking dead standards of gore, sorry in advance, there isn't a lot of violence, this au kinda requires violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9251396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: Charles likes to think of himself as the world's first post-apocalyptic gourmet chef.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *yelling, banging pots together* TWO FICS IN TWO DAYS TWO FICS IN TWO DAYS TWO FICS IN TWO DAYS
> 
> so instead of finishing my wips or working on prompt requests i did a little self-indulging and. well.
> 
> here’s a scene that literally no one asked for, one that has been haunting me for actual months now because i love torturing myself. basically end of the world angst and fluff.

_Cabbage, kosher salt, radish, scallions_ , Charles recites in his head. He ticks each item off of his mental checklist with each one of his even, steady steps forward. _Red pepper powder, fish sauce, ginger, garlic cloves, Korean salted shrimp, and granulated sugar._

The fish sauce and the shrimp will prove to be the most difficult to procure or replace in this particular recipe, but he hasn’t been able to get the image of Napa Cabbage Kimchi out of his head for the last three days and Rosa jumped at his offer to join her and Jake on their scavenging expedition yesterday, which is how he finds himself armed and alone, walking down the middle of Martin Street, surrounded on all sides by the abandoned city of New York one brisk November morning. 

Charles likes to think of himself as the world’s first post-apocalyptic gourmet chef. It’s a title Gina regularly scoffs and rolls her eyes at, but it’s his, and he wears it like a badge of honor. While other groups scavenge and make due with scraps of week-old food that survived the riots and are not yet tarnished by the hoards of the undead (he refuses to call them zombies - the word tastes like poison in his mouth) wandering aimlessly throughout the streets, he always seems to manage to scrape together enough preserves and not-quite-stale-yet bread products to turn out meals that he might have even called delicious before this whole apocalypse thing began. Rosa’s had to stop him repeatedly from making dishes for other groups. _We’re not welcoming them to the neighborhood_ , she snaps.

Of course, an unfortunate downside of being the first post-apocalyptic gourmet chef (aside from the whole apocalypse thing) is that he is often part of the small scavenging group that ventures out of the safety of the ninety-ninth precinct to gather the ingredients. Others tried, initially, to gather things from lists he would make, but it only took once or twice for Charles to realize that if he wanted it done right, he would have to do it himself. 

Why anyone would ever want to leave the precinct is _beyond_ him. The Nine-Nine is _safe_. The Nine-Nine is _warm_. The Nine-Nine houses the living members still remaining in their respective tattered families; Kevin and Cheddar, Sharon and all three Jeffords girls, Rosa’s mother and sister and two young nieces, Darlene and Lynn, Karen, and two of Amy’s brothers, one of which is married with two kids of his own. All of them spread comfortably amongst the four floors of their precinct-turned-home, all of them are safe behind fortified walls and bulletproof glass. Charles could honestly stay there forever if they let him, content to reorganize the canned goods in what was once the evidence locker, content to play with Cheddar where he stays in one of the lower floor’s interrogation rooms, far enough away that his dander won’t irritate Amy’s allergies. 

But for as happy as he would be to stay in one space, there are others who are not.

Rosa is perhaps, unsurprisingly, first on that particular list. She gets a strange gleam in her eye when she wakes up on scavenging days; a determination that just isn’t there on a regular day sets her face into hard lines, the kind of determination that dares those flesh-eating monsters haunting their city to turn their clouded, rotting gazes on her. He isn’t sure if she knows it, but her snarl always twists into a terrifying grin every time they actually do lock in on her. And then, there’s Jake. Charles really shouldn’t be surprised - Jake has never really been one to sit still for too long. He has this thing going with Rosa, a contest of sorts, to see who can kill a creature in the most creative way (right now Rosa is winning: she drew seven creatures in by propping open the front hood of a van and revving the engine, waiting until they were lunging forward and swiping at the screaming engine before shouldering the closed driver’s side door hard enough to knock the hood loose, sending it slamming down on their heads). Charles recognizes it for what it is (“If I don’t treat it like a game, I won’t be able to -” Jake had stopped, choking on the unspoken words), but he still hates it. 

Of all the former detectives, Amy was the only one who seemed to share Charles’ dislike for leaving the precinct. She always took the time to don extra protection, even when Rosa made fun of her and Teddy sighed impatiently. Charles liked that she was extra precautious, because he was, too. She was a major part of the reason he didn’t think he was totally out of his mind for just not wanting to leave safe shelter.

But that was before she disappeared. They woke up one morning and both Amy and Teddy’s beds were both empty - Amy’s neatly made, Teddy’s a relative mess - and that was that. At first he’d hoped that maybe they just snuck off for some much-needed isolation, considering there’s a ninety-percent chance that there is a child under the age of nine in any room at any given time around the precinct and that they didn’t leave a note or anything. But after three days, a sort of unspoken understanding passed through the group. They weren’t coming back. 

At first, Charles isn’t sure who takes it harder: her brothers, or Jake. 

The realization affects them all differently, of course, their coping mechanisms as vast and wildly different as their personalities - Rosa becomes more savage in her kills, Gina more devoted to teaching Cagney and Lacey proper makeup techniques, Terry more anal about procedures and overnight lookouts from the roof of the precinct. And Charles - well, the meals he’s been churning out lately have been _MasterChef_ quality. He finds that Amy’s absence somehow deepens the hole left by Holt, who was in California at the beginning of the riots and has yet to turn up (the western seaboard went dark three days into the ordeal and none of them have had a cell phone signal in months). It’s a ragged, gaping wound, one that Charles isn’t sure will ever properly heal. 

(“I should’ve tried harder,” Jake mumbled one night, six days after she disappeared. They were supposed to be keeping watch on the front doors for signs of trouble on the street - for signs of Amy, really - but Jake was staring straight ahead, gaze fixated on the adjacent building’s broken window, on the gently rustling curtains keeping time with the night’s light breeze. “She’s been different, she’s been _off_ ever since she came back from her parents’ house with Rosa -”

Charles had to repress a shudder at that point. Amy and Rosa left in the middle of the night and were gone for two days on what he would later learn was an expedition to Amy’s parents’ house in Newark. He could still see it so clearly - the unfamiliar car rolling to a stop outside the precinct, Amy’s pale and expressionless face, Rosa’s withdrawn explanation (“They’re gone”), and the understandably fearful face of a young woman named Daisy, the driver, whom Rosa credited as their savior. Amy just hasn’t been the same since then. She doesn’t laugh anymore, she doesn’t smile. The life has left her eyes. And honestly, there’s a morbidly curious part of him that desperately wants to know what it is they saw or had to do. Amy refused to speak of it and even Rosa just paled a few degrees and shook her head. 

The uncertainty of it all tortured Jake to no end.) 

Three weeks later, Charles can hardly stand the sight of Jake’s face. 

He can picture it perfectly now, even with three blocks between the two of them. The haunted look in his eye, the permanent frown grotesquely creasing what used to be laugh lines, the small, deep crease that has become a permanent feature between his expressive brows. Raphe and Luis have Raphe’s family and each other. 

Jake has only his mother. 

Charles’ eyes pop open as Imaginary Jake’s face twists and tears pour down his sallow cheeks. Charles has seen Jake crying one time since Amy left; he’d stumbled into an interrogation room, unaware that Charles was on the other side of the glass with Cheddar, and had broken down. Charles slipped out as quickly and quietly as he could, but the damage was done, he’d already seen, and now he never has to idly wonder what Jake looks like when completely overwhelmed with loss.

He shakes his head in an attempt to clear the mental image, narrows his eyes, and forces himself to focus on the world around him. 

The morning air is definitely chilly, but Charles can only dig one hand deep into his windbreaker’s pocket; he clutches his handgun a bit tighter with the other, tucking his arm in as close to his side as possible, trying and failing to ignore the cold seeping in through the leather gloves Rosa found three scavenges ago. There’s a semi-automatic rifle slung across his back, a rather large hunting knife that once belonged to Rosa in a holster on one hip, and a radio that crackles quietly every now and then and knocks against his other hip with each brisk step. 

“ _Boyle, d’you copy? Over._ ” Jake’s tinny voice emits quietly from the radio.

Charles pulls the radio from his waistband and ignores the warning light flashing in his mind in response to the heavy weight ever-present in Jake’s voice. “I copy, over.” He says into the receiver. 

“ _I just got done searching that old thrift store. Do you need any backup? Over._ ” 

“Actually, I think I’m good. I’m almost to the store and it’ll probably be faster if I’m by myself. Thanks, though. Over.” 

“ _Let us know if anything comes up,_ ” Rosa interjects. Charles can practically _feel_ how bored she is waiting in the van. “ _We can be there in two minutes. Over._ ” 

“Copy that.”

He clips the radio back to his waistband just as the quiet hissing moan that the undead produce starts up somewhere behind him. The sound has been something of an apocalyptic soundtrack, one that used to paralyze him with fear; now it’s nothing more than a warning call, one that urges him to maybe pick up the pace a bit. If he’s lucky, he can get to this Korean restaurant and back to the van where Rosa and Jake are waiting without having to waste any bullets. 

He’s just broken out in a light jog when he rounds the last corner and stops short. 

There are two creatures on the street before him. 

One of them is ramming dully and repeatedly into the side of a car long-abandoned at the side of the road, fingers scraping against the back door. The other is on it’s knees a few feet closer to where Charles is currently frozen. It’s not his first time seeing one… _eat_. Still, the sight of it is just as terrifying and nauseating as it was that first time. He’s far enough away that the thing hasn’t noticed him yet, but considering that hissing moan is getting louder behind him, he’s only got a few more seconds of that luxury. There’s an open alleyway up and to his left that he might have enough time to dart into, or he could take a chance and try to fend them all off by himself - two minutes can mean the difference between life and death, he’s seen the of that evidence before, so even if he can make the call to Jake and Rosa like he’s itching to, he _will_ have to fend them off alone - but before he can make a decision, his gaze locks in on a rather familiar pair of boots still clinging to that creature’s latest meal.

He must have tripped over those damned things a hundred times in the entryway to the Nine-Nine. And no matter how many times Teddy smiled apologetically as Charles swept them to the side with his foot, they were always there again the next day. 

His brain switches to autopilot immediately - a curious coping mechanism, but one he takes full advantage of in the moment. He drops the gun in his hand just as the creature behind him rounds the corner, whipping the knife out of his holster and swiftly sinking it home right through the thing’s temple. It crumples to the ground at his feet and Charles yanks the blade free just as the second and third take notice of the commotion. The closer one stands on rotted feet and they both begin to shuffle toward him, pale and gnarled hands reaching for him, but Charles rushes forward and meets the first in the middle. It meets the same fate as the first, falling solidly to the ground, and Charles has just enough time to yank the knife free and spin on his heel to stab it through the side of the third creature’s forehead. He stares up at the sky to choke down the nausea that suddenly washes over him as the third creature collapses in a dull and final heap. He yanks the blade free and turns his back, trying to shake as much putrefied blood off of the blade as he can as he stoops to grab his discarded gun. 

Once his knife is reholstered and his gun is in his hand, he turns again toward Teddy.

“ _God_ ,” he chokes. There’s nothing left. There must have been a swarm of them, enough to overpower him; as much as Charles hates the guy on principle, he had to admit that Teddy was a skilled fighter. He doesn’t really make stupid mistakes; at least, none stupid enough to cost him his life. Of all the people he’s lived with over the last few months, Teddy was one of the last he ever expected to see like this. He kneels down at Teddy’s boots and glances around, carefully scanning his surroundings. There’s a part of him, a small part of him, that hopes Amy may appear. That she might come tip-toeing out from a darkened storefront, checking to see if the coast is clear. He knows, logically, that she isn’t here. Still, he studies the landscape closely, hoping against all hope for any sign of her. 

This street is pretty non-descript as far as apocalyptic New York goes. Most of the storefronts have been completely destroyed, a few of them even burned, in the initial riots that rocked the streets and the subsequent looting by the survivors. Abandoned cars line the sides of the street, some of them with doors and windows still open, one of them crashed into the side of a building a few yards down. It’s a strange, near-silent scene. 

He turns his focus toward the car that third creature was ramming into. There’s nothing special about it at first glance - Charles can’t even really tell the make or model or anything, just that it’s small and four-door - but the more he stares, the more details come to life. There are dents all along the frame of the vehicle, and streaks of dark-red blood only a few shades darker than the paint stain the lid of the trunk and the back windshield, which is cracked in three different places, like three spiderwebs all interweaving as one. And it’s tilted just slightly to the left, as if something is inside the car.

He swallows hard as he slowly rises to his feet. He’s seen this before - the undead locked in abandoned cars, having turned in the initial wave, eternally trapped in what was supposed to be their vessel to escape. Rosa calls them bait and makes fun of Jake when he kills them because they’re “easy targets.” His watch beeps once in warning as he slowly approaches the car - he’s already been gone for fifteen minutes, Rosa gave him very clear instructions to be back in twenty or else she would come looking for him - and he silences it before glancing over his shoulder. Aside from the four bodies behind him, the street is silent and abandoned. 

The windows are too clouded with fog and blood (undead blood, from the smell of it) to see clearly through and Charles raises his gun with a trembling hand as he reaches for the door handle with the other. He readjusts his grip a few times, recenters his weight between his feet, and sucks in a deep, steadying breath before flinging the door open. 

He’s poised and ready to shoot whatever may come flying out at him, braced for impact in a worst-case scenario, but nothing comes. His chest heaves as he slowly lowers his gun and squints at the figure shrouded with shadows, huddled in the back seat of the car. It doesn’t move, even as he takes a step closer, but there’s something not quite right about it that sets his teeth on edge. It’s not until he’s practically leaning into the car that he realizes he’s basically leering at a woman. 

A very familiar woman.

“Amy?” He gasps. She’s fetal, knees drawn up to her chest, arms around her knees, face buried in her arms, but at the sound of her name her head raises a degree and her bloodshot eyes appear beneath her wildly tangled hair. She’s trembling, he realizes, that’s what was throwing him off; she trembles so violently it nearly shakes the car. He can hear her familiar labored breaths, the gasps that grate against his eardrums that he remembers as always preceding one of her monster panic attacks, and in an instant he’s pieced everything together. 

They must have come there together in search of something - food, shelter, who knows - when they were ambushed by a hoard. She managed to find a temporary escape in the backseat of this car, but Teddy wasn’t so lucky. The dents in the car frame, the smeared undead blood, that was from the part of the hoard that had zeroed in on her. There’s no telling how long she cowered here, forced to listen to Teddy’s last moments over the sounds of her own attackers beating down on her shelter. 

He holsters his gun and immediately rips his windbreaker off, a momentary blast of relief shooting over him when she doesn’t shrink away from him as he leans into her space and quickly throws it around her frame. Still, she doesn’t move, doesn’t even lift her head up any further as he sinks back to his haunches beside the car. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Amy, say something, _please_!” He urges, but she doesn’t answer. She just keeps staring, keeps trembling. 

“ _Jake and Rosa_ ,” he gasps suddenly, and her head lifts another degree. He struggles to unclip the radio but once it’s free he reaches forward to grab her ankle (whether it be to ground her to reality or to steady himself, he’ll never know) as he mashes the TALK button down. “Diaz, do you copy? Over!”

There’s a beat of static, and then Rosa says, “ _we copy. What’s wrong? Over._ ” 

“Amy, it’s, it’s Am- _I found Amy_!” He practically shouts into the receiver. Her head has lifted enough that he can see the deep valleys in her forehead where her brows have drawn together and the dark shadows beneath her eyes. 

The static lasts a few seconds longer this time - Charles imagines Rosa dropping the radio to seize Jake by the collar and yank him backwards to stop him from immediately sprinting headlong out of the van unarmed. “ _Where are you?_ ” She finally demands, and it truly is a demand, filtered through a clenched jaw and bared teeth and a thousand unspoken threats leveled at anything standing between them. 

“Three blocks over, we’re, like, forty feet from the Korean place!” 

“ _Stay where you are and keep her safe, we’re on our way!_ ” 

He drops the radio in the seat where his elbows are planted and grips her leg with both hands. “It’s okay, Amy,” he says softly as tears begin to well in her eyes. “It’s okay, they’re on the way. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

It takes four and a half minutes for their pounding footsteps to fade in, and Charles jerks his head back just in time to catch sight of Jake rounding the corner a few feet ahead of Rosa. He only has the brief few moments it takes to get from that corner to where he kneels to absorb the look on Jake’s face - windswept, weathered, pale and pinched and oh-so desperate - before he leaps backwards and Jake dives into the back seat of the car. Amy makes a sound the moment Jake yanks her to him, a short, strangled grunt, that sends Jake rearing backwards and almost out of the car. “You’re hurt?” He gasps, his voice strained and frayed. 

She doesn’t answer - she just grabs him by the loose zippers of his windbreaker and drags him back to her. The harsh and punishing sobs that started spilling out of her the moment Jake came into her view are suddenly muffled into his shoulder as he hugs her fiercely, her fingers wound tightly into fists against his back. The sounds that come from them both are desperate, almost inhuman, and while part of Charles is ready to blast off right there on the spot with pure joy at witnessing their reunion, another part of him wants to sit down on the ground and just _cry_. 

“S'that…Teddy?” Rosa murmurs in his ear. 

Charles glances at those boots without thinking before immediately forcing his gaze back to Jake and Amy and swallowing thickly. “Yeah,” he rasps once he’s certain he’s composed. 

“Were those three…um…” 

“One of them was. Another was actually…trying to get into the car. The third one was just following me.” 

He sees her nod from the corner of his eye. “She was in the car?”

“Yeah.” 

She grunts, a small, marveling noise from the back of her throat. “That’s the last time I make fun of Peralta for checking cars on scavenges,” she says softly. “Has she seen -” 

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. But even if she hasn’t seen, she…she heard.” 

Rosa hums, a hoarse sound that comes from somewhere deep in her chest. “She’s lucky, all things considered,” she mumbles. 

Jake’s back expands and contracts in such an exaggerated manner that Charles is reminded of the time they chased a perp for seventeen blocks and Jake was so winded he threw up. “Yeah,” he grunts, watching Jake comb her hair away from her face with his fingers and turn his head to rest against hers. “She’s lucky.” 

Charles pretty strongly suspects that Amy has at least two broken ribs, judging from her careful, restrained movements as she inches across the backseat, toward Jake’s extended hands. Charles and Rosa circle around to the back of the car and create a casual body-wall between her and Teddy’s remains, and if she knows what they’re doing, she hides it well. Her breaths come in shallow pants as she perches on the edge of the back seat, her feet already planted on solid ground, her hands already clasped in Jake’s. She’s glaring down at her feet, her face ablaze with such a blessedly familiar determination that is easily recognizable beneath the fear and dirt and grime and sweat and tears, and Charles watches with a distinct feeling of awe as she sets her jaw and hauls herself up to her feet with Jake’s assistance.

She falls pretty instantaneously into his chest, a broken cry tearing right out of her throat, but Jake’s already prepared to support her full weight. Her arms tremble as he hauls her closer, her fingers clumsy against his chest as he bends and hooks an arm beneath her knees and lifts her off the ground. There’s fear in Jake’s eyes as he readjusts her slightly, a fear so visceral that Charles honestly can’t pin the cause down - the fear of aggravating her injuries, the fear of the fact that she’s somehow weathered down to skin and bones over the course of one month and weighs practically nothing in his arms, the fear of her vulnerability coupled with a truly intoxicating game of _what-if_. But it only lasts a moment. 

“Let’s go.” Jake says, and the words rumble with a darkness Charles has only ever dreamed of being able to produce. 

Rosa strikes out ahead of them, jogging several yards in advance to check around every corner before waving Jake forward, and Charles brings up the rear, carefully watching for signs of movement while studying the way Amy’s head fits so perfectly in the crook of Jake’s neck.

They make it all the way back to the van before another creature appears, and Amy’s fingers tighten noticeably where they cling to Jake’s jacket at the sound of the tell-tale hissing moan; Rosa grimaces and nods for Charles to close the van doors before lumbering off to take care of it. Jake has started singing softly between Charles closing his door and rushing around to the passenger’s side, and the song sounds distinctly Yiddish, almost like a lullaby. Charles realizes a second too late that the song drowns out any sound Rosa may produce; he chances a glance at them framed in the rear-view mirror from where he sits in the passenger’s seat. Amy’s eyes are closed, her forehead resting in the crook of Jake’s neck, glittering tear tracks cutting through the grime coating her face pressed against Jake’s chest, legs bent and draped across his lap, arm bent up to allow her to cling to his jacket. She’s still trembling, Charles notes, but it’s less exaggerated now. Every muscle in Jake’s body appears to be tensed, carefully wrapped around Amy at just the right amount of pressure to be both soothing and protective. Jake’s eyes are closed, too, his lips moving against the top of her head as he quietly sings, but something about his posture tells Charles that if he were to reach out to touch Amy, Jake might just accidentally break his wrist on instinct. 

Rosa climbs in a few moments later, slightly breathless, and takes one look at the couple in the back seat before wordlessly starting the car. Jake stops singing when Rosa puts the van in drive, and distantly Charles realizes that he never even made it to the Korean restaurant. Thoughts of Kimchi fade as Jake releases an exhale that sounds remarkably similar to a whispered _thank you_.

None of them speak for the entire twenty minute drive back to the precinct, and even as Rosa pulls into the secure garage beneath the precinct and climbs out to roll the door closed, neither Jake nor Amy move. Jake opens his eyes briefly, just long enough to nod to Charles. And when Charles climbs out, Rosa jerks her head toward the door standing between them and the rest of their group. 

It’s another forty-five minutes before that door opens once more to give way to Jake ushering a slightly-more-steady Amy inside, and by that time Charles and Rosa have gathered the others and told them the news. And after threatening them all within an inch of their lives, Rosa even manages to ensure that it’s just the squad plus her brothers there to greet Amy, so as not to overwhelm her. She’s withdrawn, limping, far too pale, and looking to be on the verge of collapsing from complete and utter exhaustion alone, but she’s no longer trembling. Charles thinks there might even be a spark of relief in her eyes when she reaches up to gingerly hug her brothers, and even though he still looks rightfully worried, the light has undeniably returned to Jake’s eyes. 

The same eyes that track her every move with hawk-like precision, never once leaving her figure, that only soften when she’s looking back at him and reaching for his hand.

She seems reluctant to leave Jake’s side, but the promise of a hot shower and fresh clothes and medical attention is too enticing to pass up, so within ten minutes Charles finds himself sitting on the ground beside Jake outside of the women’s locker room on the second floor, listening to water groan through the pipes in the wall between them and Amy. They can hear Rosa and Gina’s voices chattering away inside the locker room, occasionally joined by Karen’s (“There’s not much I can do about the broken ribs, but I can definitely ease the pain with the medicine rations and help with the sprained ankle,” she’d reassured them after a quick assessment), but it’s all too distorted by the tiled floor and Sheetrock walls and complaining pipes for them to really understand what they’re saying. It doesn’t seem to bother Jake, whose head is tilted back to rest against the wall. Charles might be imagining it, but he swears the corners of Jake’s mouth are just barely lilted upward. 

“D’you think she’s okay?” Charles asks quietly. 

Jake’s head falls sideways, and he studies Charles’ face for a long moment before answering. “No.” He says, and he sounds as winded as Charles feels. “Probably not. She went through a _lot_. But she’s here, which means she _will_ be okay. Eventually.” 

“And what about you? Are you okay?” Charles asks, and the pipes suddenly fall silent behind them. 

It takes Jake a long moment. “None of us are, so…I dunno. No, I guess.” He finally answers. “I’m just…thankful. That we can be not okay, y'know… _together_. I was just…” he exhales slowly, head bumping backwards as his gaze drifts to a spot somewhere behind Charles. “Outta my mind. I was so worried, Charles, I couldn’t - I mean I, I just - I thought I’d l- _lost_ -”

He makes a quiet sound, a choked sound, and Charles nods in understanding. “She’s back, now,” he reminds Jake. “She’s back and I really don’t think she’s leaving. I don’t think you have to worry about losing her ever again.” 

Jake releases a choked, watery laugh just as the tears clinging to his eyelashes finally succumb to gravity. He wipes them away quickly on his sleeve. “Maybe. Hopefully.” Charles has got half a mind to tell him that people don’t cling to people as tightly as she clung to him when they intend to leave again the next morning, but Jake thumps his shoulder before he has a chance. “Great job today, by the way.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. You found her. You saved her. You’re a hero, man.” 

The word settles right in the center of his chest, warm and bubbling. Hero. 

(It doesn’t feel real until later, after Jake has painstakingly combed every last knot out of Amy’s hair with a gentle, practiced precision, that it really hits him. They’re both on the floor, Amy still settled between Jake’s legs, leaned back against his chest with her hair neatly braided and arranged over one shoulder, lulled to sleep by the warmth of Jake’s proximity and the sounds of Gina and Rosa’s gentle, affectionate banter and the mighty, rising tide of morphine in her veins. _I did that_ , he thinks as Jake’s head tilts absently to the side, his lips pressed softly and almost imperceptibly against her temple.) 

Charles Boyle, the world’s first post-apocalyptic gourmet chef, a _hero_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick follow-up drabble for an anon on Tumblr

Jake lets Amy sleep like that, all curled up on the floor and leaned back against his chest, for twenty minutes before concern for stiffness setting in on top of the rest of her injuries overrules her desperate need for sleep. He tries to move beneath her gently, to ease the break back into consciousness as much as possible, but he can feel her tense up against him after a moment of shifting his torso up. “C’mon,” he whispers to her, “you need a bed.”

She makes a small sound, pitiful and thin, but lets him hold her up with his hand on her shoulder while he moves into a crouch. Her arms circle around his neck automatically and her face contorts in a wince as he scoops her up again (he’s not sure where her wheelchair got off to, but judging by the delighted high-pitched laughter coming from down the hall, he wouldn’t be surprised to find Cagney and Lacey playing with it). The flow of Rosa and Gina’s conversation doesn’t even pause despite the fact that Jake can feel every eye on his retreating back.

They moved her bed five days after she left to make room for the little old woman who used to run the bodega around the corner, shunting her cot off into an interrogation observation room down on the first floor. He knows for a fact that Cheddar’s been in there, which means the whole damn thing is probably covered in dog hair, rendering it useless to her. 

He’s left with only one sensible option.

The room he shares with Charles is dark - neither one of them have been back in here since leaving for the scavenge that morning (was it really just six hours ago?) - but he finds his little twin bed easily enough. The blankets are still turned down from this morning which makes easing Amy down onto the mattress that much easier. He pulls the blankets up higher, almost to her chin, acutely aware of her half-lidded gaze openly studying his face. He busies himself for a moment in tucking the edges of the blankets in beneath her, before finally meeting her gaze.

He wants to ask her if she’s okay, wants to smooth his palm across her forehead and kiss her hairline, but it’s all he can do to remember to breathe because the look on her face is smoldering.

And…she’s freezing. He knows this because her fingers sluggishly, clumsily find his hand still planted on the mattress at her side, and they’re so icy cold that they raise goosebumps on his skin.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispers, a little shocked at how husky his voice is.

Her eyes widen and panic flits across her face, bald-faced and open for all the world to see. Her fingers are suddenly vice-like, the morphine long-forgotten, her chin and lower lip quivering in terror.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he kneels down beside the bed, lifting his hand so that their fingers tangle together. “I was just gonna get you more blankets -”

“No,” she mumbles, and his heart lurches because it’s the first word he’s heard her say in over a month.

“N-no? But…Amy,” he lifts his other hand to sandwich hers between his palms, rubbing gently while carefully avoiding her tender side. “You’re still freezing.”

She tugs her hand away, almost as if to pull it loose from his grasp, but her fingers flex and curl around his palm and he realizes a beat later that she’s pulling him forward. “Stay,” she says, even quieter than before.

Jake blinks once, twice, brow furrowed so hard he’s starting to feel the beginnings of a tension headache. It’s not as though he doesn’t want to stay - on the contrary, the thought of leaving her side for longer than a second is practically unbearable - but the last thing he wants right now is for her to think that his highest priority is anything other than her comfort. “Are you sure?” He asks shakily.

He sees her jaw clench before her head bows in a definitive nod, and then he’s hunching over the bed to kick his shoes off and carefully climbing over her to squeeze himself into the space to her right. She doesn’t move from where she lays on her back (she can’t, really, not without his help) but her head turns to follow him as he settles down beside her. His back presses against the cinder block wall behind him, sending a chill down his spine, but Amy’s just inches away and her face is so close that their foreheads are practically touching and their hands are clasped together on the mattress in the breath of space between them, so the cold sort of fades from his attention.

Amy’s eyes rove his face even as her eyelids begin to flutter, and he holds as still as he can for her, only looking away once upon spotting the thin laceration right in front of her left ear near her hairline. Her chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm, a welcome change to the hummingbird thrum he’d felt when he first grabbed her in the back seat of that car.

“M’sorry,” his gaze snaps back up to her face. She looks like she’s fighting very hard to stay awake and present; she looks like she’s slowly losing. But her fingers increase in pressure around his and he belatedly registers that the little mumble that has just escaped her chest is an apology.

“Don’t,” he says.

“But -”

“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupts. Her brow furrows, and in spite of everything he feels that old familiar rush of affection at the sight. “It’s over now,” he says, pushing through. “We found you and…and it’s over. That’s all that matters.”

“Jake -”

“Ames, listen to me. All I care about is that you’re safe. Everything else, it’s…it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t care about any of it. Your safety and your well-being is way more important than anything else. You don’t have to apologize to me.” There are deep worry lines stretching across her forehead, the ones that practically spell out just how much she doesn’t believe him, so he lifts his chin and presses his lips against her forehead until he feels the skin smooth out beneath his touch. “I promise.” He whispers.

She seems to believe him - for now, at least - so he pulls back from her forehead to bow his head on the pillow and inch forward until his forehead touches her temple. The weight of her head when she turns it to rest against his is warm and familiar, enough to make him close his eyes and bask in it. “Don’t go?” She asks softly.

“I’ll be right here when you wake up.” He murmurs into her shoulder. Her fingers squeeze briefly, and a moment later, she’s slipped in to peaceful unconsciousness.

He’s still there when she wakes up hours later, just as he is the following morning, and the morning after that, and every morning beyond it.


End file.
